Lent is upon us, and that means seafood specials at restaurants across the country, both for Catholics who refrain from eating meat on Fridays during the six-week period, and for those for whom it has become a seasonal lifestyle for other reasons.

Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, noticed some relatively unusual fish, such as Alaska cod and flounder, rather than the more typical pollock gracing menus, particularly at quick-service restaurants. Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, pointed out that the rather debauched holiday of St. Patrick’s Day always falls during Lent, which is intended to be a time of abstinence. The contrast means that green menu items and corned beef share menu space with seafood at this time of year.

Bret noted that there are other, smaller, less formal holidays at this time of year, too. Mar. 10 is Mario Day, important to a certain subset of young video gamers. It’s followed by Pi Day on Mar. 14, celebrating the universal constant that starts with 3.14. Restaurants reinterpret it as Pie Day, and offer a variety of specials around pizza and dessert. Pat observed that BJ’s is offering specials in its skillet cookies, called Pizookies. 

Mar. 16 is Steve Austin Day, which holds some importance for professional wrestling fans. This year it’s also part of St. Practice Day, which some people celebrate on the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day (which is on a Monday this year), ostensibly to build up their alcohol tolerance for the annual celebration of Irish culture. 

Then there’s April Fool’s Day on April 1, International Cannabis Day on April 20, Earth Day on April 22, and Star Wars day on May the 4th. Pat pointed out that March 9 was National Meatball Day, and Bret expressed his disdain for that and other food holidays, but he acknowledged that they can be a great and relatively easy way to bring in more customers. 

In other F&B trends, Pat observed the rollout of several new sandwiches this week, including Potbelly’s Barnyard, and Bret noted new sauces from Buffalo Wild Wings and Hardee’s. Of particular interest, he said, was the fact that Hardee’s called out Duke’s mayonnaise specifically as an ingredient in its new Carolina Gold BBQ Sauce, and Bojangles also mentioned that it is serving its annual Lenten fish special, the Bojangler, made with Duke’s tartar sauce. 

The guest on this week’s podcast is Einat Admony, the chef and owner of Balaboosta restaurant in New York City and the recently opened Moondog, a listening bar that serves Admony’s version of Mexican food, among other things. The Israeli chef and restaurateur shared insights into how Middle Eastern and Mexican cuisines are related, and also discussed the unique nature of Israeli cuisine.

Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, were both invited to a preview of Starbucks’ spring menu. At the tasting, which took place at the Starbucks Reserve location in NYC’s Empire State Building, they sampled a collection of colorful beverages, including a purple Iced Ube Coconut Latte, pink Iced Cherry Chai and several lavender drinks returning from last spring. 

Pat especially liked the cherry chai with its topping of cherry cream foam and crunchy red and pink sugar flakes, while Bret was impressed with the combination of ube, coffee and coconut and voted that as his favorite.

The editors were also impressed with the new food additions—a warm, savory Jalapeño Chicken Pocket and a sweet pistachio-filled pastry. Both made nice accompaniments to Starbucks’ newest blonde roast coffee, Sunsera Blend. It tasted pretty complex for a light roast.

The two then shared an interview with Sayat and Laura Ozyilmaz, husband-and-wife chef-owners of Dalida in San Francisco. Dalida serves “borderless” Mediterranean food, mixing and matching flavors and dishes from the Turkey, Lebanon, Armenia, Cypress and other countries in the region. Sayat is from that area but Laura is Mexican, and some of her culinary influences come into play on the menu, too.

Listen as they describe how the restaurant’s location in Presidio Park and California-sourced ingredients also impact their menu, and how they foster sustainability and community at Dalida.

Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, recently attended a milestone event for the town of Seguin, Texas: the debut of the first Applebee’s-IHOP cobranded restaurant. 

With around 110 items, the menu is about as large of those of Applebee’s and IHOP individually, featuring their greatest hits alongside collaborative mashups, like a Buffalo Chicken Omelet that Pat particularly enjoyed. 

Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, remarked that, although Buffalo chicken is everywhere, and spicy breakfasts are now quite commonplace, this is the first Buffalo breakfast item he has seen.

He and Pat also discussed menu items that debuted at other chains, including caviar service that is now available at Sullivan Steakhouse and sister brand Eddie Merlot’s. At $110 it’s a premium offering to say the least, but the co-hosts observed that if there weren’t demand for it they wouldn’t have added it to their menus.

There were also some interesting new collaborations this week, most notably Taco Bell introducing Birthday Cake Churros developed in concert with the New York City-based pastry shop Milk Bar. A couple of doughnut chains also introduced collabs of different sorts. Duck Donuts rolled out Sonic the Hedgehog-themed treats in celebration of the debut of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on streaming service Paramount+. 

Meanwhile, Krispy Kreme rolled out more broadly movie-themed items, such as a Caramel Popcorn doughnut and a Blue Raspberry Slush doughnut in partnership with Hulu, apparently encouraging people to snack on the movie theater concession-inspired treats while watching their favorite shows at home. 

Bret also interviewed Sarah Thompson, executive chef of Casa Playa, a coastal Mexican restaurant at the Wynn Las Vegas, who discussed her approach to procuring top-notch ingredients and elevated cuisine while also appealing to the many guests who just want tacos and queso fundido without a lot of fuss. 

Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) just reopened the "The View" restaurant atop the Marriott Marquis Hotel in NYC’s Times Square. Bret had a chance to attend the opening reception, and he remarked that while revolving rooftop restaurants are not generally known for their great food and cocktails, clearly Danny Meyer and his team are not following that route. 

Limited-time offers are designed to boost traffic and sales, and lately, convenience stores have been competing with restaurants to lure customers with their own LTOs. Pat talks about a couple released this month, including RaceTrac’s Taco Pizza and tasty new chicken nuggets from Krispy Krunchy Chicken, a brand popular in convenience stores as well as freestanding units.

Pat and Bret also dissected the dirty soda trend, in which branded soft drinks are mixed with cream or coconut milk and often candies and cookie pieces. They agree that the trend is still in its early stages, as most consumers really aren’t that familiar with dirty sodas.

Then the hosts shared an interview with Eric Huang, chef-owner of Pecking House, a fried chicken concept that he started during the pandemic as a delivery-only brand.  Huang has since grown Pecking House into two brick-and-mortar restaurants, the original in Brooklyn and a smaller outpost in New York City’s Chinatown. Both frequently have lines out the door.

Huang talks about how he blends Asian and American flavor profiles to set his menu apart and how his fine-dining training has taught him valuable management skills. And as Lunar New Year celebrations draw to a close, Huang shares some of his family’s culinary traditions, including sticky rice dumplings made from a cherished recipe. Give a listen. 

Valentine’s Day is approaching quickly, and another major American midwinter celebration, the Super Bowl, is just past. 

Chain restaurants gear up for both of them, each in their own way. Pizza concepts have long offered heart-shaped pies for Valentine’s Day, but doughnut chains are following that lead and offering their core products in heart shapes too. 

Pat and Bret discussed how wings are the most popular appetizer ordered with pizza, making them perhaps the most common combination in American foodservice. 

They also discussed how invented holidays such as National Pizza Day are, in fact, great sales drivers, giving people a reason, no matter how small, to order something they love. 

For the podcast’s interview this week, Bret interviewed Donnie Madia, co-owner of One-Off Hospitality in Chicago. He discussed the restaurant group’s new catering arm, how his restaurants that were featured in the hit FX TV series "The Bear" benefitted from the exposure and his philosophy about the future of fine dining.

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and many restaurants are offering the usual romantic dinners for two. But this year, even coffee cafes and smoothie bowl concepts are spreading the love with specials themed to the holiday.

Pat and Bret chat about the trend, and how restaurants are not just targeting couples anymore. An OpenTable survey found that groups and singles are increasingly dining out on or before Valentine’s Day. So candy-topped milkshakes, strawberry lattes and heart-shaped doughnuts make perfect sense. 

Valentine’s Day and Super Bowl vie for attention every February, with heart-shaped pizzas and chicken wings competing on menus.

Speaking of wings, Bret came across a couple of new sauces recently. El Pollo Loco introduced its first new flavor in almost a decade—mango habanero. The sauce taps into the sweet-heat trend that we’ve been seeing a lot of lately. And WNBA star Angel Reese partnered with McDonald’s on a new smoky barbecue sauce. It’s flavoring a quarter-pounder rather than chicken, and this is the first time the burger giant is collaborating with a female athlete. 

Our guest this week is Chris Smith, CEO of Zunzi’s and Zunzibar based in Savannah, Georgia. Zunzi’s started as a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop and now has multiple locations in Georgia and South Carolina and is expanding to Florida. Zunzibar has a topnotch mixology program but manages to project a relaxed, tropical vibe—a formula that has proven to be a winning combination. 

Listen as Smith talks about how he’s built a team culture that’s as unique as these two concepts. 

The Super Bowl is approaching fast as the Kansas City Chiefs will face the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans on Feb. 9, and in the restaurant world the Big Game means big orders of chicken wings.

Promotions for wings aren’t rolling in quite the way they have in recent years, but Pat pointed to a couple of them, including new wing sauces such as Popeyes’ Louisiana Garlic, and the Sweet Chili Glaze from Wingstop that Pat and Bret discussed last week. Also, Cousins Subs has a new giant sub that’s certainly suitable for Super Bowl parties.

Bret, meanwhile, is freshly returned from Rimini, Italy, where he attended SIGEP World, a large annual foodservice expo. It was very Italian, with huge varieties of gelato, coffee, and pizza. 

Bret noticed vegan options in gelato, including a peanut butter one, which seemed like a no-brainer since peanut butter is already delicious and naturally vegan. He also saw a lot of pinsa, the flatbread cousin of pizza from Rome. In terms of coffee, he was taken with some single-origin espresso beans from Ivory coast, and beans that had been co-fermented with peaches. 

This week’s interview is with Tyler Haake, the executive chef of the Atlanta location of Indigo Road Hospitality’s Italian concept, Indaco. The chef shares strategies for making seasonal pizza, working with local producers and creating a positive work environment that encourages everyone to excel without succumbing to excessive stress. Give a listen.

Pizza toppings are going way beyond the usual these days.

Pat and Bret discussed that trend, leading off with all the appetizer-inspired pizzas we’ve seen lately. Jalapeño poppers, a nostalgic bar food, are back as pizza toppers at &pizza and Your Pie, plus Your Pie has another LTO pizza topped with spinach-artichoke dip. 

Bret came across Chicken Tikka Pizzas at several Indian concepts in California during a recent trip. And this week, Via 313, a Detroit-style pizza chain, introduced tikka masala pizza, which has masala curry sauce, marinated chicken, cheese, onions and peppers.

Aside from pizza, beef, especially steak, is showing up in limited-time offers—and it usually performs very well. Noodles & Company brought back its Steak Stroganoff, a comforting dish with marinated steak in a mushroom sherry cream sauce served over egg noodles. It’s been the fast casual’s top selling LTO, and winter is a logical time to bring it back. Dig also introduced steak recently, a char-grilled sirloin featured in dinner plates and bowls.

To wrap up, we shared an interview with Chris Morgan, who along with his partners Reza Farahani and Iranian cookbook author Najmieh Batmanglij, operate Persian restaurant Joon in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Chef Morgan talks about how many popular Middle Eastern dishes trace their origins to Iran, and Joon’s menu includes specialties from other cuisines, including Levantine. The menu also reflects his experience working in California restaurants and is inspired by the ingredients Joon sources from an organic farm in Maryland. Give a listen.

This new year, there has been a lot of buzz about how short-lived most people’s commitment to their resolutions are. 

Pat and Bret discussed that trend, and the fact that restaurants don’t pile on the better-for-you limited-time offers in early January the way they used to. Instead, they start rolling out later in the month, possibly in anticipation of slimming-down efforts that are renewed in the spring.

They rounded out the podcast with an interview Bret conducted with Yara Herrera, chef and partner at Hellbender in the Queens, New York, neighborhood of Ridgewood, who discussed the changing role of women chefs, her sourcing strategy and some of her favorite dishes. Give a listen.

Welcome to a new year of Menu Talk. On this week’s podcast, Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, and Pat Cobe, senior menu editor at Restaurant Business, talk trends.

New Year’s Day marks the start of Dry January, which seems to be motivation for people to moderate alcohol consumption for a while, even if they fall off the wagon before the month is out. Pat has tried it and stuck with it twice, but this year, she’s going with “Damp” January instead, cutting back without completely abstaining. 

However Dry January shakes out, the hosts are in agreement that the quantity and quality of mocktails at restaurants and bars is much improved. Bret recently wrote about how the complexity and craftsmanship of spirit-free options offers non-drinking guests an experience that’s not at all diminished. In fact, spirit-free pairings or smaller pours with a tasting menu can actually enhance rather than dull the experience.

Aside from the spirit-free trend, which Pat and Bret see continuing, we chatted about the abundance of food and drink predictions that have landed in our inboxes. Will the sweet-heat or “swicy” flavor trend move into 2025, and what will be the “it” cuisine this year? And what’s with all the brown sugar and espresso on the beverage side? Plus, what happened to all the healthy menu items that usually launch in January? 

Tune in to find out the latest, plus Pat shares an interview with Nathan Louer, chief brand officer at Jamba. He discusses how Jamba has evolved from a juice and smoothie concept to a destination for meal replacements and snacks that balance health and indulgence. Louer and his team are focusing innovation on the core menu, introducing new categories including bowls, blended coffees and bites. Give a listen.